Arbitrary
by Mandy2
Summary: Two consenting adults who don't get along, who are on opposite sides of the war, deal with the consequences of the war and another typical night of their uncommitment. A baby. A wedding. A marriage. And it isn't arbitrary.


Disclaimer: I don't own it.

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She remembered that night clearly. The night that shouldn't have changed her life. The night that was, by that point, an expectation. It was not arbitrary. It was not rape. She wished she had the courage to tell everyone that in a confident, final tone.

They'd been fooling around for ages. She theorized that the war elongated it all. If there'd been no war, they would've been done with each other in a matter of weeks.

But the war spaced out their encounters; their separate sides spaced them out and their obligations spaced them out. Sometimes she and he… sometimes they'd have three days where they'd be all over each other, locking themselves into his apartment or hers, not seeing anyone else for those three days. Sometimes, they wouldn't see each other for a month or more.

It had been six weeks and she'd heard from her family (her colleagues. Her family. It was so hard to discern the difference) that he'd been heavily involved in missions.

All hearsay, of course. No one knew for sure. Well, she knew. She knew he was involved but she didn't say anything. That was their agreement. If information managed to slip from one mouth to the other, they'd ignore it. They'd pretend like it had never been said.

It was one of the only solid parts of the agreement.

It wasn't love. It was sex, in a time where there was no time or safety for love. It was sex, a meal when there was time, a roof when there was more, and sometimes they nursed one another's wounds in those spare hours before they had to let their own sides know where they were.

She'd… and he'd… well, she wasn't so sure his side cared, but she'd sent up many a panic, squeezing in an hour or two with him before returning to the Order and lying; she'd said every time she'd nursed her own wounds, which held her up.

It was so many unimportant things.

And then one night, his first night back after six weeks, it happened. She'd nearly gone crazy without him.

His head was split open; it was only a sliver. The moonlight shone in the doorway behind him, and he stood there, crouched over, clutching his head, the blood trickling down his blonde hair, and he looked at her with this utter pain mixed with this utter need and Ginny was tired of pain and she was tired of need and she healed him up and selfishly, oh so selfishly, she took him.

She closed the door and without a second thought to contraceptive charms, they reunited.

She'd gotten pregnant, of course, and now she sat with him for their wedding portrait. Ginny knew that he knew what night it had been. With the schedule they had, it wasn't hard to pinpoint the date. She hadn't been able to tell him for another three weeks after she knew; she'd been unreachable as she helped guard Azkaban.

He did the right thing of course. No baby of his, not with his bloated idea of his worth among the Death Eaters, not with his money, not with his name, not with his prestige, would die.

Ginny offered. She thought that it would've been what he wanted. She thought he wouldn't want his heir to be half-Weasley. He'd slapped her. He apologized of course after a long silence, and pulled her into his arms and held her to him for a long time.

One drunken night a few weeks later he'd told her he was trying to think of the worst thing to say.

He'd come up with a pretty good one. "This may be the only chance at an heir that I get."

She wanted to slap him. Instead, Ginny cried in his arms then but he didn't let her go, which strangely comforted her. She told him that the night he'd been drunk and confessed all the misdeeds he ever committed against her, and confessed that his primary motivation was to make sure she didn't get attached to him.

They were to be married the next day, and it wasn't merely because of a hangover that Draco looked peak-ish. Both of them looked gaunt, and all the wizarding makeup in the world only made them appear as though they were faking a glow. Draco begged, her family begged, and even the Order begged that she stop working to give the baby a chance. It was a boy, she knew, but no one else did and she didn't want Draco to know because he'd probably force her into house arrest until the Malfoy heir was born, safe and sound.

The night Draco begged, the first time she'd seen him sincere out of the bedroom, she looked him in the eye and searched him for a Death Eater motivation. She'd felt endlessly guilty when she couldn't find any.

She looked healthier than he did. She smiled broadly, shaking a little and Draco's hand squeezed hers to get her to stop. But he too broke into a big smile and she felt a little better, a little more convincing.

Her family was reluctant to believe their cover; the cover they told the press and the cover they'd told their friends. After all, hadn't they supplied her endless information about his Death Eater activities over the years?

It had been years, Ginny realized, since all this started. She couldn't remember why or when or how, but it had been at least a few years.

So why hadn't she said anything?

Deep down, they knew that the pregnancy had been responsible for the marriage, and preferred it the way it was, if barely. It was the right thing to do, and one of her brothers, one of the tall ones, she couldn't quite make out, had said he was surprised Draco knew how to do the right thing.

Their mother had told them that all Malfoy bashing was to cease from the wedding onward. After all, the Weasleys were the Malfoys were the Weasleys.

They were watching Draco and Ginny as they took their pictures, in the Malfoy style. Her family wanted to believe their explanations, and wouldn't go far to prove them.

The Death Eaters, on the other hand, had not been so forgiving. In essence, Draco had to do what he'd claimed to be doing all along. He joined the Order for his own safety.

Begrudgingly, Ginny knew.

She snapped back to reality, feeling the pressure on her hand ease and suddenly, she had the sudden urge to kiss him the way she'd kissed him after she'd healed his head and started this whole mess. Maybe it would be like the first kiss they had; she couldn't remember that.

She tried to commit as little of the fluff as possible to her long-term memory, due to the important details of her work she had to remember.

So Ginny did. She leaned over and grabbed his left ear with her free hand (her hand had been tied up back at her place that night too; she had her wand in it) and kissed him, with an open mouth, affectionate but sad eyes, and earnest. The kind of earnest that wanted to forget about what was going on outside, and remind him of why he came back to her.

He probably thought it wasn't dignified. This wasn't the way a Malfoy would do things, and she better learn how to behave. He probably thought she was trying too hard to be too sentimental and he probably thought she really didn't care and just tried to convince herself she did, or convince other people. And he probably didn't give a rat's ass about other people.

And it was contrived, not even déjà vu. It was what everyone else expected out of them. It wasn't arbitrary and it wasn't life-changing. But he kissed her back, and that was enough.


End file.
